I just read a short story my friend Marshall published recently and was blown away. I remember him working on this crazy novel back in college about five friends who were slowly waking up to the knowledge that they were actually God who had split himself up into several unknowing entities for a time just to check things out from that angle. Really trippy sort of stuff. He never finished that (though I still wish he would), but this short reminds me of it. It's a haunted house story, but not like any other haunted house story you've read. You can buy it for 49 cents on Amazon Shorts. Here's the beginning:
One.Architecture opened its eyes.
The house startled one of its inhabitants by yawning: there was no wind to blow the door open. Was it an intruder? An earthquake? Before she closed the door, she looked outside for signs of seismic instability; later, she checked the Internet. Finding nothing, she shrugged the episode off. Houses settle. Some are haunted, especially in San Francisco, but she wasn’t the sort who attracted ghosts. It had to be one of those noises city-dwellers sometimes hear: a neighbor’s dog knocking over a broom that was resting against a wall, a kid losing control of his skateboard and wiping out, a delivery truck clipping the side of a parked car… the normal daily urban soundtrack.
Two.The house knew itself. I think; therefore, I… what? It spent the next week contemplating its newfound self-concept.
I am.
I. (I?) (???)
I exist.
This is really happening to me.
Me?
What was existence, anyway? The house struggled to organize its knowledge: it was consciousness without order, awareness without paradigms. It perceived what was going on within and around itself, and kept still as it sifted through sensations. Dust motes and random thoughts floated in its dark spaces.
At first, it refrained from opening doors and windows. It left the air conditioning controls alone. It inhabitants seemed to act with purpose – pushing buttons, passing through doorways, flushing toilets. The house understood none of these behaviors, these patterns. It watched them, and learned.
Three.You’re awake. Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.
The house listened. The voice seemed close. It wasn’t human.
The houses on either side of you are not conscious yet, but in time, perhaps they will be. I am two doors down, on the right. I am 219. You are 215. Welcome to the world.
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